“25 percent chance” of Grand Solar Minimum

November 3, 2013

More speculation about slowing solar activity.

I created the above video in 2012 as an all purpose rebuttal to this perennial denial favorite. The paradox is that, depending on the denier, and the time of day, you may hear – “Of course it’s getting warmer – it’s the sun stupid!” – but in recent months when the “no warming in 16 years” meme has been in vogue, you may have heard the opposite, never mind that 2010 was the warmest on record, in the pits of the most recent solar minimum.

Mike Lockwood is a solar physicist who became a target of climate deniers several years ago when he wrote one of the definitive papers debunking the “it’s all caused by the sun” canard.
Now check and see if this latest interview with him becomes some kind of teapot tempest among the usual suspects.

From Lockwood and Froelich 2007, “Recent oppositely directed trends in solar climate forcings and the global mean surface air temperature”

Watch for this to be spun – I am sure that Dr. Lockwood’s “don’t look for a little ice age” disclaimer’s below show that he is aware of how the game works. (see video above for an example of denialist standard O.P.)

The sun’s activity is in free fall, according to a leading space physicist. But don’t expect a little ice age. “Solar activity is declining very fast at the moment,” Mike Lockwood, professor of space environmental physics at Reading University, UK, told New Scientist. “We estimate faster than at any time in the last 9300 years.”

Lockwood and his colleagues are reassessing the chances of this decline continuing over decades to become the first “grand solar minimum” for four centuries. During a grand minimum the normal 11-year solar cycle is suppressed and the sun has virtually no sunspots for several decades. This summer should have seen a peak in the number of sunspots, but it didn’t happen.

Lockwood thinks there is now a 25 per cent chance of a repetition of the last grand minimum, the late 17th century Maunder Minimum, when there were no sunspots for 70 years. Two years ago, Lockwood put the chances of this happening at less than 10 per cent (Journal of Geophysical Research, DOI:10.1029/2011JD017013).

Little ice age

The Maunder Minimum coincided with the worst European winters of the little ice age, a period lasting centuries when several regions around the globe experienced unusual cooling. Tree ring studies suggest it cooled the northern hemisphere by up to 0.4 °C.

But Lockwood says we should not expect a new grand minimum to bring on a new little ice age. Human-induced global warming, he says, is already a more important force in global temperatures than even major solar cycles. Temperatures have risen by 0.85 °C since 1880, with more expected, according to the most recent assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The takeaway: the well known 11 year cycles of solar irradiance and sunspots have very minimal effect on global temps because of the ocean’s thermal inertia. We may in fact be due for a “grand solar minimum”, such as was observed during part of the “Little Ice Age” – but such a minimum would be a very small forcing compared to the buildup of greenhouse gases, and would, at best, offset less than a decade of temperature rise.

I made the video below in 2010 summarizing the paradox in that year, – low solar activity and high global temps. With denialists, what’s old is ever new again.

Like this:

13 Responses to ““25 percent chance” of Grand Solar Minimum”

A grand solar minimum is sort of due. Yet the most we could expect is a temporary pause in the rate of temperature increase. If we use this pause to mitigate and prepare then just possibly we might save ourselves.

If we use the pause to carry on as normal, then God help us when it ends.

Indeed, its a bad sign when low solar output + a cooling ENSO with several strong La Ninã’s is hardly able to flatline the average atmospheric temperatures. I wonder what kind of temperature rise we can expect when the sun is back with full output and some strong El Ninõ’s to boot.

Cheers. In fact I’ve been able to do that the last few winters again, though sometimes only shortly and only on enclosed shallow canals (no flowing water). But I’m happy that it was possible and to be able to use the skates again after about 10 years of no ice-skating on natural ice.

Surely the important detail from that is “Tree ring studies suggest it cooled the northern hemisphere by up to 0.4 °C.” I would have thought solar activity over several decades either way would affect bother hemispheres equally.

[…] causing global warming, and not human carbon dioxide emissions? Sunspot numbers in 2013 have been well below average for this point in the cycle. If we are now heading into a grand minimum of solar activity, will […]

5 July, 2005
“The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. OK it has but it is only 7 years of data and it isn’t statistically significant…,” Dr. Phil Jones – CRU emails.

7 May, 2009
“No upward trend” has to continue for a total of 15 years before we get worried,” Dr. Phil Jones – CRU emails.

15 Aug 2009
“…This lack of overall warming is analogous to the period from 2002 to 2008 when decreasing solar irradiance also countered much of the anthropogenic warming…,” Dr. Judith L. Lean – Geophysical Research Letters.

19 November 2009
“At present, however, the warming is taking a break.[…] There can be no argument about that,” Dr. Mojib Latif – Spiegel.

19 November 2009
“It cannot be denied that this is one of the hottest issues in the scientific community. [….] We don’t really know why this stagnation is taking place at this point,” Dr. Jochem Marotzke – Spiegel.

13 February 2010
Phil Jones: “I’m a scientist trying to measure temperature. If I registered that the climate has been cooling I’d say so. But it hasn’t until recently – and then barely at all.”
BBC: “Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming?”
Phil Jones: “Yes, but only just.”

2010
“…The decade of 1999-2008 is still the warmest of the last 30 years, though the global temperature increment is near zero…,” Prof. Shaowu Wang et al – Advances in Climate Change Research.

2 June 2011
“…it has been unclear why global surface temperatures did not rise between 1998 and 2008…,” Dr Robert K. Kaufmann – PNAS.

18 September 2011
“There have been decades, such as 2000–2009, when the observed globally averaged surface-temperature time series shows little increase or even a slightly negative trend1 (a hiatus period)…,” Dr. Gerald A. Meehl – Nature Climate Change.

14 October 2012
“We agree with Mr Rose that there has been only a very small amount of warming in the 21st Century. As stated in our response, this is 0.05 degrees Celsius since 1997 equivalent to 0.03 degrees Celsius per decade.” Source: metofficenews.wordpress.com/, Met Office Blog – Dave Britton (10:48:21) –

30 March 2013
“…the five-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade,” Dr. James Hansen – The Economist.

as always, best to watch the video series so as to avoid embarrassments such as this. But, I’m here to help. Please check out actual interviews with Phil Jones, Gerald Meehl, James Hansen,and Lord Stern in context – always better than sound bites from right wing media

[…] causing global warming, and not human carbon dioxide emissions? Sunspot numbers in 2013 have been well below average for this point in the cycle. If we are now heading into a grand minimum of solar activity, will […]